Assessment Papers and Practice

Last year QCDA developed exemplar materials to support the assessment of national curriculum levels in KS3 for all foundation subjects. These materials were published in July 2010. They are really helpful on a variety of levels. They provide a much richer illustration of both standards and the nature of the evidence teachers should use to assess their students. Perhaps more importantly these materials illustrate good assessment practice. They clearly move away from the practice of 'levelling' students every month: that is, making constant summative judgements based on limited and incomplete evidence.

The materials were deliberately developed to improve assessment practice and to align practice in foundation subjects with the principles of APP (Assessing Pupil Progress) that were already becoming accepted in core subject assessment. These principles involve breaking down broad summative judgements (levels) into clearly focussed formative assessment of the different aspects of learning that will help students improve. The materials illustrate how teachers should look at distinct aspects of performance and consider the nature of the evidence that shows students' achievement in that aspect. In doing so the materials support that formative assessment dialogue between teacher and student that is at the heart of teaching and learning: good 'Assessment for Learning' in effect.

However, the new adminsistration at the DfE has decided not to publish the guidance and assessment frameworks upon which the exemplar materials were based, despite the fact that both were completed at the same time. This is unfortunate as the one complements and informs the other. Together they provided a very good model of assessment in all the foundation subjects. However, these draft papers can be found here Assessment Papers. and are worth looking at and sharing amongst foundation subject teachers. The site also contains papers to support the use of FFT estimates in target setting - which are again relevant to all foundation subject teachers.

New Assessment Guidance for KS3 Art- APP probably

QCDA has just published the online exemplification of standards materials. These provide much more than just examples of levels. They provide an illustration of good assessment practice and embrace the principles of good assessment which is at the heart of APP. These materials were prepared quite explicitly to develop assessment practice in line with APP. It is not yet clear whether the government will actually take the next step and make the links explicit in the website. However, this is not particularly relevant because the materials themselves do the work anyway. They refer to the three key areas for assessment which have informed all iterations of assessment criteria for the last 25 years. These are 'Understanding Art, Craft and Design', 'Creating Art Craft and Design' and 'Exploring and Investigating'. The materials illustrate how these can be evaluated and what might constitute evidence. For instance, in what students make, what they do and what they say or write).

What the materials emphatically do NOT do is constantly seek to label students with a level every three days. They unpack how assessment can draw attention to strengths and weaknesses and what students need to do to improve. I have written elsewhere about assessment issues and produced some working papers which can be found on the art pages in Bucks Grid for Learning. I think these QCDA materials are important and they do challenge the practice of constantly 'leveling' students which is too often an exercise in meaningless labeling rather than informed assessment.

Every Child is begining to Matter

It has been a curious week working across the whole educational spectrum from infant schools to university courses. I am an external examiner for art on the BA Hons Primary Education offered by Birmingham University and today I attended a briefing meeting for external examiners across the brand new Faculty of Education, Law and Social Sciences. We were told of the synergy between these recently introduced bedfellows on the Perry Bar campus - so look out for courses in criminology and early years.

It was interesting to hear of recent innovations in the university to improve the learning experience for students by listening to students in seminars and consultations to review the experience from the student's perspective. Curious that the previous evening I had been with a primary school's governing body looking at the process of appointing a new headteacher and we noted how many adverts included quotes from infant children saying what they wanted in their new headteacher. Is ECM genuinely changing from an ernest slogan into an all embracing new mind set in which the children's (student's) voice is actually begining to change practice in all phases of education?

Another intriguing, and new idea for the university, was the notion that if students fail a module, rather than engage in a sequence of resits, they should be invited to agree and sign a 'learning contract'. This would define expectations of what they should do like; attend lectures, write essays, read books and also what the university would do like provide guidance etc. The curious thing for me was that they were going to do it after the student had failed. In schools we are now doing this before students fail in ordwer to prevent them from failing. But there are again very clear parallels with the developing culture in schools. A few days earlier I had been working with a group of secondary schools dicussing how interventions, coaching, mentoring and picking students up from home to get them into the exam on time is making a difference. These schools no longer acknowledged student failure and provided CPD to do better next year but they took personal and responsibility for intervening with every student at risk of failing and took action this week and next week and every other week if necessary. Again every child is really begining to matter.

Uses and Abuses of Levels and Levelling

At a meeting recently there was a discussion of the role of the art level descriptions particularly at Key Stage 3. The meeting was attended by experienced art educators (teachers, AST's and advisers) and there was a some very robust criticism of levels in art and design. This entry is an attempt to clarify my thinking about these issues.

Simply dismissing levels as completely useless is like dismissing soup spoons as useless because they are no good for paddling a canoe. Paddling canoes and tasting soup are both proper activities and the tools used (soup spoons and wooden paddles) are fit for purpose. The tools, although they have a superficial resemblance, are simply not interchangeable.

The key issue is to be clear about what levels were designed to do and how they can be used to support teaching and learning on the one hand. And to be equally clear about how they can be misused to fulfill functions for which they were never designed, and for which they are unsuited.

Level descriptions are OK when:
The level descriptions provide the starting point, for that professional debate about what we might expect of children in art at the end of each key stage. The broad general statements do a couple of valuable things. They can be separated into the three key strands and so provide the basis for the three broad assessment objectives. This is important because it reflects the full breadth of learning in the subject and indicates in general terms how the national curriculum translates into distinct, observable types of behaviour/attainment. This is particularly significant in the primary sector where teachers do not have a background in GCSE, GCE assessment. It was very unfortunate that the level descriptions were presented as a single paragraph and not in their separate strands so this point has been, and continues to be, missed by many.

The level statements, once they are separated into the strands, do imply and begin to describe the increasing independance, maturity and sophistication that might be expecteded from pupils at a particular key stage. (I know they are supposed to be age - independent but I think this is not realisable in practice.) They can, and should, encourage and support assessment for learning which will in turn lead to a much richer vocabulary and set of references with which teachers and pupils will discuss, explain and illuminate pupils achievements and how they can improve. I will not bother to rehearse Assessment for Learning here. But it seems to me that it must start with the conceptual framework of the subject as described broadly in the level descriptions.

It does not matter so much that the level descriptions are not precise clearly defined assessment criteria. They were not designed to be. But even if they are imprecise all written assessment criteria only acquire meaning once they are offered up to actual work, by actual children and are discussed, shared and compared, by the community that uses the assessment criteria.

Part of this process is to understand the assessment objectives in terms of their proper context ie to pupils of a particular age and experience. That is how Edexcel assessment criteria can use words like 'basic'. This really only has meaning in the context of pupils taking GCSE. It is informed by the shared professional judgements of teachers who know what might be expected of such pupils, and who can see and discuss the difference between words like 'basic' and 'competent'.

In the same way it is quite possible for secondary teachers in one school, or indeed in a group of schools, to look at portfolio's of work and to discuss and give meaning to the implication of greater intentionality and independance which might distinguish the achievement of one pupil (who might be described as working at level 5) and another (who might be described as working at level 6). The words do not describe explicit observable behaviour any more than the word 'competent' does.


Level 5: "They manipulate materials and processes to communicate ideas and meanings and make images and artefacts, matching visual and tactile qualities to their intentions."
Level 6: "They manipulate materials and processes and analyse outcomes. They interpret visual and tactile qualities to communicate ideas and meanings and realise their intentions."

In the same way a community of teachers in a primary school can look at work, discuss and give meaning (that makes sense to them) to the broad statements describing the difference between level 2 and level 3. This discussion and shared understanding is valuable and is likely to support Assessment for Learning by clarifying where pupils are and where they might get to etc. A paper which explores assessment and the role of level descriptions can be found on the Bucksgfl website.

Levels are wrong when:
Assessment descriptions of foundation subjects are not nationally moderated or adequately exemplified. They cannot be used as if they have the rigour, reliability and validity of level assessment in the core subjects. These have explicit and detailed assessment criteria in the national curriculum tests which are nationally moderated and carefully exemplified over many years. There is a significant programme of professional development to support this assessment.

Level descriptions in art and design were never designed for, and cannot be used as criteria to assess individual pieces of work or performance over a limited period of time. They are not fit for this purpose and this is confirmed by QCA. As they are not nationally moderated or exemplified any attempt to use teacher assessment as quantifiable comparable data, for instance to measure value added, is misguided because it is unreliable.

Conclusions?
Levels are valuable and important in supporting Assessment for Learning. It is important that the level descriptions do reflect the key strands that define the subject.

The preoccupation with the single aggregated level score inhibits the ability of teachers to explore and discuss with pupils the separate strands which are at the heart of their success and which define how they might improve.

It is reasonable to challenge any practice which requires art teachers to record assessments which they feel to be flawed and for those assessments to be used as if they provided reliable and nationally comparable assessment data. This practice is not the fault of, or recommended by, QCA or HMI.